Since the early 1990s, the number of people using the World Wide Web and the Internet has grown at a substantial rate. As more users take advantage of the services available on the Internet by registering on websites, posting comments and information electronically, or simply interacting with companies that post information about others (such as online newspapers or social networking websites), more and more information about users is publicly available online. Naturally, individuals, organizations, and companies such as professionals, parents, college applicants, job applicants, employers, charities and corporations have raised serious and legitimate concerns about coping with the ever-increasing amount of information about them available on the Internet, because online content about even the most casual Internet users can be harmful, hurtful, or even false.
The process of evaluating a user in a variety of professional and/or personal contexts has become increasingly sensitive to the type and quantity of information available about that user on the Internet. A user may desire an easy way to assess whether she, or somebody she is interacting with, has accrued a reputation that is generally positive or negative or positive or negative with regard to a certain aspect of their reputation. Exemplary interactions of a user with another include, for example, beginning a romantic relationship, offering an employment or business opportunity, or engaging in a financial transaction. As the amount of information about a user available online increases, the process of sifting through all of that information, assessing its relative import, classifying it, and synthesizing it down to a general assessment of the user's public, online, reputation becomes more daunting.
Therefore, there is a need for methods, apparatuses, and systems that will allow parties to continue using the Internet while ensuring that the information about them on the Internet is not incorrect, slanderous, scandalous, or otherwise harmful to their reputations or well-being. There is also a need for systems that will allow parties to understand rapidly and broadly how their reputations may be perceived by other individuals, groups, organizations, and/or companies, based on the information available about them on the Internet.